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MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGES 7
Sixth Form Spanish Trip To
The Cervantes Theatre
Luis Black, L6E
The Spanish Department held a trip to see
Yerma
, one
of the Spanish playwright Frederico García Lorca’s
most well-known plays, at the Cervantes Theatre in
Southwark.
Yerma
takes place in rural Andalusia in
Southern Spain, before the Spanish Civil War in 1936;
however, the director Jorge de Juan, decided to set
Yerma
in rural Cuba. During a fascinating Q&A after the
show, he explained that this decision was due to Lorca’s
love for the island, as well as the similarities between
Lorca’s rural Spain and Cuba. De Juan also discussed
the effect of Lorca’s sexuality on his writing, namely
the similarities between the playwright and his titular
character, namely their shared desire for childbirth.
Yerma
, in English ‘barren’, is a play dealing with themes
such as the role of the woman, both as a mother and a
part of her community, as well as isolation, jealousy and
passion.
At the Q&A, de Juan also discussed his use of a hammock in the
centre of the stage. Not only did it help to build the Caribbean
setting, but was a way to hide from the world, and its outside
judgement. De Juan ultimately said that the hammock acts
as a trap for Yerma – as she feels trapped within her childless
marriage. In the most captivating scene of the performance,
Yerma’s companions join her in a pilgrimage for infertile women,
culminating in a dramatic end to the play. Despite de Juan and his
cast noting the loss of Lorca’s natural rhythm seen in his Spanish
in an English translation, I would nonetheless recommend
Yerma
to anybody, even non-Spanish speakers, as the company run both
an English and Spanish rendition of Lorca’s ‘tragic poem’.
Pushkin and Tchaikovsky Conference
Luca Famiglietti, L6E
On Tuesday 22 January I was lucky enough to be able to attend a Russian conference, which was kindly hosted
by St Paul’s School for Girls. We left school at around 2pm in order to trek to Hammersmith station, where it was
a brief walk to the school. We arrived with plenty of time to spare and were greeted to some delicious Napoleon
cake (a Russian
mille-feuille
type cake) and tea.
The conference was a lecture on
Queen of Spades
, a short
story written by Aleksandar Pushkin and later transformed
into an opera by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. This was to be followed
by a trip to the local cinema to watch a live stream from the
Royal Opera House of the
Queen of Spades
. The lecture was
by Professor P R Bullock from the Faculty of Medieval and
Modern Languages at Oxford University. It was an incredibly
interesting lecture as he described the importance of Russian
opera’s within classical Russian society and Tchaikovsky’s role
in the development of Russian opera. After the fascinating
lecture we were led to the dining hall where St Paul’s treated
us to some take-away pizza, which was a pleasant surprise.
I had the opportunity to speak to some other students
studying Russian, which was really useful as I am the only
member of my class. Then we braved the snow and headed to
the cinema. It was a very peculiar experience watching a live
stream of an opera in the cinema but enjoyable nonetheless.
Unfortunately after, it was time to make the journey back
home; I would like to thank Dr Harrington and Valentina for
organising this trip!